Reefer Madness?

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 01:51:40PM +0200, Arjan Hulsebos typed out:
> On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 11:03:42 +0100, M Holmes wrote
> > Well, I saw the Eurofighter Typhoon do a stand on its afterburners 
> > and do a walk down a field on Saturday and I have to say it was a pleasure
> > to watch.
> > It's the machinery of death, but it's extremely damn cool.
> A peace-keeping device, in the modern rhetoric.

	Peace is their profession. Though I suppose the only way to 
prove the branch of the military whose motto that used to be would have 
been to destroy the Western world.

> Yeah, I don't see a 747 do a stand.... On the other hand, seeing one of those
> beasts come in for a landing at the start of the runway is also quite a sight.

	A long time ago I saw a documentary about test pilots, and they 
had Chuck Yeager being interviewed, because after he retired from the 
Air Force he became a test pilot for Boeing. They got him to talk them 
through film of the first 747 going for its demonstration flight in 
front of airline reps for the first time, and he was at the controls and 
got bored, and put it through a full slow roll. Apparently it was touch 
and go whether he was fired or not until the first order came in... 
Yours,
	Jon (15 days behind and closing)

P. S. Even on film a 747 going through a roll looks very wrong. Like at 
Duxford in the UK they regularly display two Junkers Ju. 52/3m pre-WWII
transports. They are big things and cruise at about 120mph and when they 
do turns there is just no way in the mind they're going fast enough to 
stay up. And yet somehow...
-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk